These two words are often confused with one another. Since I know a lot of people in the childbirth field, I see these words a lot. Not even all the birth people use them correctly, which surprises me a bit.

Breach

A breach is a gap in something or a violation of something. To breach something is to break, break through or break open something.

They were in breach of contract.

The enemy attempted to breach the castle walls.

Breech

A breech is the back or lower end of something.

The baby was breech; the midwife could see his bottom emerging first.

Yes, there is only one letter difference between these two words, but as you can see, they mean completely different things. Granted, you could use breach in reference to birth, but it certainly wouldn’t mean the same thing as a baby being born bottom first.

The obstetrician created a breach in the mother’s belly when he performed the cesarean.

Do you use who or whom? There is a lot of confusion about these two pronouns. The answer is you use who if it refers to the subject of the sentence and whom if it refers to the object in the sentence. Clear as mud, huh? It may be hard to remember those days of diagramming sentences in English class (do they even do that anymore?), but actually this is quite simple.

Who

When you’re using who, the person you’re talking about is the one doing something in the sentence.

Who cleaned up the table?

Whom

When you use whom, you are talking about someone as the object in the sentence.

Georgia invited whom?

Georgia is the subject of the sentence, and whom is the object because you want to know who she invited.

Quick Trick

If you can restate the sentence using the words him or her, use whom.

Georgia invited him.

Remember the m on the end of both him and whom and you’ll do all right.

What you write represents you to your readers. In other words, if you don’t make a good first impression, they may put down your book or click away from your website. Misspellings, grammatical errors and other problems with your writing can send people running away as fast as they can. If you want to be taken seriously in your field, don’t write with any errors. Too much pressure, you say? Ah, this is where your friendly, neighborhood editor comes in.

It is the editor’s place to make you look your best. They polish up your writing and present you as shiny and clean as your mother did when you were a child. No spelling mistakes, no writing errors. It is the equivalent of washing the barbecue sauce off your chin and combing your hair.

Let’s say you have a website where you offer your educated opinion in your niche market. Do you really think anyone will take you seriously if you don’t have all your T’s crossed and your i’s dotted?

What about submitting a manuscript to an agent? If you don’t clean it up and tighten up your writing, you have a good chance of ending up in the slush pile that no one reads.

Have an editor go through your writing. Don’t choose your friend, the English teacher… s/he means well, but they have not been trained in editing material for conciseness and grammatical correctness. Pay the fee and hire a real editor. They come in a wide range of pay scales online. Choose one you get along with that you can afford. Let them do their job and you’ll look perfect to your readers.

One error that really bothers me, and I see it in emails all the time, is which and witch. Again, this one should be obvious, right? You wouldn’t say, “Witch one do you want?” Yet, people do. This is one of those errors that makes me want to slam my head into my desk.

Witch

Witch, witchcraft, witches at Halloween, witches in books…. this is nothing more nor less than a name for a type of person. Whether they are modern witches who practice paganism or witches of yore in stories, this word describes a particular type of person. With the popularity of Harry Potter, you’d think that this meaning would be even clearer.

Hermione was the brightest witch of her age.

Which

Which is a word that offers us a choice. Which one do you want? This is the correct usage. Which lets us know what our options are.

It’s true. While many people use the word “irregardless” when they speak and you can actually find this word in many dictionaries now, it is not a proper word, or as the dictionaries say, it is nonstandard. Most of our dictionaries today are descriptive rather than prescriptive; they reflect words in common usage rather than suggest what usage should be.

Let’s take a look at the word.

Irregardless.

It is often mistakenly used instead of the word “regardless.” Regardless already means “without regard.” So, adding the suffix -less turns the word regard into a negative. Adding the prefix ir- makes it a double negative. This makes irregardless mean “without without regard.”

I seriously doubt most people who say irregardless mean without without regard. So does that mean they do have regard for the topic at hand? 😉

So, if someone says the word irregardless to you, you can ask them to clarify their stance, as they are being redundant.

They were looking forward to attending the game, regardless of the outcome.